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Java does too http://lejos.sourceforge.net/

I don't think there are python or ruby ports though, possibly because these devices are very limited.

Forth for Mindstorms was created by Ralph Hempel, one of the select few superusers invited by Lego to participate in the NXT design.

Robot AI Mind.Forth specifically lists the Lego NXT as a candidate platform for installation of the robot AI Mind.

Standards in Artificial Intelligence officially lists the Lego NXT as an accepted standard platform in view of robot AI.

Mindstorm is a perfect example of the problem. They had a $200 set, and once you bought it, there wasn't any hook to make you buy more. So no one did. It didn't matter that they made huge profit on that $200 set that would have probably been more like $20 to create. If you aren't continuing to buy, then they failed.

Look, this is arrant nonsense. I was 45 when Mindstorms first came out, and I don't have any kids. I was one of the first purchasers, and from what I've read 50% or more of all Mindstorms sets sold have been sold for use by adults - people who simply would not have bought other LEGO products. Furthermore, since I bought my Mindstorms set, I've bought masses of other Technic LEGO, and other stuff like rotation sensors, additional light sensors, additional motors, and so on.

LEGO could develop a whole new audience with Mindstorms. They'd need to get rid of the awful firmware it comes with and bundle instead some of the many enthusiast-developed alternative firmwares (e.g. TinyVM, BrickOS, pbForth). It would be nice also to have a USB or serial port, to make interfacing things like GPS systems easier. A more powerful processor and more memory would be great. But there is a big adult audience out there for mindstorms - people who want to tinker with robotics - and that audience has far more money to spend than kids have.

LEGO are missing a trick here. They need to rebrand Mindstorms as an adult focussed product, add more compute power, and raise the price. They'd have a run away winner.

No more appropriate? Maybe not. But anyway:
Java: http://lejos.sourceforge.net/
C: http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nqc/
ASM (called LASM fro LEGO ASM): http://mindstorms.lego.com/sdk2/default.asp
Forth: http://www.hempeldesigngroup.com/lego/pbForth/home Page.html

So, yeah, if it's small enough, it's been done.
-AC

A free Mind for Mindstorms and other robots is available in Forth, for when the Mindstorms robot has enough user-fillable RAM to load in the AI4U Mind.

pbForth has long been a Forth programming language available for the "brick" of the Lego Mindstorms.

An Aibo robot fan site features the JavaScript version of the free AI Mind.

AI4U: Mind-1.1 Programer's Manual is an alternative AI textbook that describes the Robot AI Mind in the 34 diagrams of 34 chapters corresponding to 34 mind-modules.

I'm really surpsied no comments on FORTH have been moded up. pbForth was one of the 1st language/OS combos i ever heard about. i guess Forth's just not as popular as Smalltalk...

and here i thought i was in the geek land of obscure is cool...

The LEGO Minstorms robot has already been hacked for Forth by Ralph Hempel; logic dictates that the next step is to adapt the Artificial Mind from http://mind.sourceforge.net for LEGO Mindstorms, since the JavaScript teaching AI is also in Forth at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mind/.

I'm in total agreement here -- Lego Mindstorms is an ideal way to start a child with programming. The only drawback I can see is the expense.

The programming environment that comes with the system is a very simple GUI that runs under windoze. That programming environment is fairly limited, and your child will probably outgrow it fairly quickly. Once that happens, you can introduce him or her to the more advanced methods available to program the system, including Visual BASIC, pbForth and the various Gnu compilers under *NIX using legOS.

There's also a web page at http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics/ that has links to lots of other programming environments for Mindstorms.

I've got a number of comments ranging from "what a stupid idea it is to eliminate cross-platform issues by compiling right on the brick" to "what a great idea it is to eliminate cross-platform issues by compiling right on the brick" Now I don't know what to think anymore...

Here's a real pbForth application. It's a robot that navigates mazes drawn on paper. No, it's not on wheels, it's really a gantry crane, but it's something that the standard Mindstorms firmware can't do...

pbForth MazeWalker

Have fun...

Well, as Markus Noga, author of legOS said during our "Extreme Mindstoms" panel discussion at MindFest 1999, "Form is liberating"

What he meant was that within the bounds of a fixed set of parts and capabilities, the challenge is to do some thing useful with the exisiting parts, not to wish for parts to build bigger things.

Just about every LEGO enthusiast goes through a bulk acquisition mode, where the goal is to get as many parts as possible. The resulting time spent sorting severely limits building time :-)

Check out my pbForth MazeWalker for a bot you can build with just the parts in RIS 1.0 - well I added two rotation sensors and two micromotors, but you could also use touch sensors as shown in Mario Ferrari's TicTacToe Robot

Have fun...

Well, as Markus Noga, author of legOS said during our "Extreme Mindstoms" panel discussion at MindFest 1999, "Form is liberating"

What he meant was that within the bounds of a fixed set of parts and capabilities, the challenge is to do some thing useful with the exisiting parts, not to wish for parts to build bigger things.

Just about every LEGO enthusiast goes through a bulk acquisition mode, where the goal is to get as many parts as possible. The resulting time spent sorting severely limits building time :-)

Check out my pbForth MazeWalker for a bot you can build with just the parts in RIS 1.0 - well I added two rotation sensors and two micromotors, but you could also use touch sensors as shown in Mario Ferrari's TicTacToe Robot

Have fun...